I am the original poster. I definitely get problems with the ESC key on WinXP/SP3 being used to exit Everything. I have disabled CTRL-W in Everything.

There are none of the other actions you listed that are pending. I can repeatedly hit the ESC key and nothing happens. I can change where in Everything there is mouse focus (search bar or list of results) but it does not help.

Sometimes as I am hitting the ESC key repeatedly, it will suddenly work (and Everything closes as desired) after what was probably 10 to 20 tries of the ESC key.

Most of the time Everything is okay but perhaps every 20 uses, I get this problem